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3
CUSTARD APPLES
The food markets of tropical America routinely exhibit a number of large
green premium fruits whose soft and delicious pulp is likened to fruit-salad
from a tree. Variously known as “sops” or “custard apples,” these attractive
greenish globes include soursop (guanabana), sweetsop, custard apple, sugar
apple, cherimoya, and bullock’s heart. In recent decades these delicacies
have been planted ever more widely and certain ones have turned into
popular commercial products in locations far beyond their ancestral home,
including Europe, the United States, and Australia.
What is not well known is that this famous fruit family (Annonaceae) has
African members as well. These, however, are little studied and are not well
understood even within their natural habitats. Now they deserve the same
kind of attention as their botanical brethren across the Atlantic. One, the
African custard apple, has been called “the best indigenous fruit in most
parts of tropical Africa.” Another, the junglesop, produces probably the
biggest fruits in the whole family—as long as a person’s forearm and as
thick as a person’s thigh. A third—perhaps the strangest of all—“hangs like
a bunch of sausages,” each fruit a bright scarlet link. At least two more
produce small tasty fruits that make people’s mouths water at just the
remembrance from a long-ago childhood. And this group includes a tangy
fruit borne on a plant so strange that it barely rises above ground level.
This is a good time to investigate these unusual fruits. Their American
relatives, especially the highland cherimoya, are rising in horticultural
importance throughout many parts of the world. And crosses between
different species are creating hybrids that appear to have their own attractive
futures. Clearly, the African counterparts should now join in this march of
culinary progress.
Scientifically speaking, Africa’s annonas are so neglected that their
genetic variability still awaits discovery and description. Fruits of above-
average in size and excellent taste exist in abundance. Gathering those
should be a priority. Types with few or no seeds are known, and should also
be sought. Certain plants also show other useful genetic traits. Some, for
instance, grow upright while many others sprawl.
In addition, hybrids between the African species and their American
relatives may well produce brightly colored, larger fruits with few (or
243

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perhaps no) seeds. Those are genetic qualities that could bring breakthroughs
to both sides of the Atlantic.
However, much remains to be learned before anyone can cultivate the
African species with confidence. At present, for example, many of the seeds
are reluctant to germinate.1 And some of these species–junglesop is an
example–take as long as 10 years to produce their first flowers. Vegetative
propagation is apparently untried, but experiments along this line seem
likely to overcome the delay as well as several other practical difficulties.
All in all, then, these inter-related species comprise a great group for
Africa-wide collaborations and for both professional and amateur
contributions. As with other pre-domesticated species, urgent needs are:
• Making better use of the existing wild resource;
• Documenting traditional and modern usages;
• Collecting different species and types for comparative testing;
• Genetic selection; and
• Horticultural development.
Philanthropists could help a lot. Funding any of these steps would
immensely speed up the process of bringing these crops to modern life.
Progress and satisfaction will not even be notably expensive.
Notable interesting delights among local custard apples are described below.
AFRICAN CUSTARD APPLE
Best known among the indigenous annonas, African custard apple
(Annona senegalensis)2 produces fruits that smell like pineapple and taste
like apricot. Found from Senegal to South Africa, the tree is a surprisingly
common companion to thousands of villages. People everywhere go out of
their way to preserve a few trees around their houses or in the fields where
the crops grow. But for all that, this species has never been awarded serious
agronomic attention.
If now given horticultural help, the African custard apple will likely
become planted quite intensively and its fruits will become better foodstuffs,
far more widely eaten and far more widely sold in local and city markets
than they are today. As a result, the crop would contribute substantially to
Africa’s future nutrition, not to mention its overall rural economy.
1
“Despite many attempts,” write our contributors Roy Danforth and Paul Noren, “we
have been unable to germinate Annona senegalensis seeds except about two plants out of
thousands of seeds.”
2
This plant’s botanic name is in dispute. The full formal name is Annona senegalensis
Auct. Another name often cited, but apparently in error, is Annona senegalensis Pers.
Some taxonomists denote the plant as Annona chrysophylla Boj.

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The African custard apple tree is a surprisingly common companion to thousands of
villages from Senegal to South Africa. Resembling its more famous American
cousins, the fruits smell like pineapple and taste like apricot. (Paul Latham)
In its present unselected state, this local custard apple is smaller than its
American counterpart. Also, its pulp is packed with many pale brown seeds.
Despite that, however, ripe ones are very attractive with bright colors and
tasty flesh. In appearance, these fruits are lumpy skinned, roughly spherical,
yellow to orange in color, and fleshily soft to the touch. They are best picked
before achieving full ripeness and stored in a warm, dark place to ripen
slowly out of reach of the sun.
The tree bearing these fruits branches so prodigiously it is usually hardly
more than a shrub. Under exceptionally favorable conditions it may reach 8
m, but more often is only 3 m tall. It has large leaves and is deciduous.
Although distributed throughout tropical Africa (Senegal, Congo, Sudan,
Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, for example), it
clearly possesses at least modest cold tolerance. It occurs, for instance, in
subtropical parts of South Africa, reaching its southern natural limit on
Natal’s north coast.
Ecologically, the plant appears best suited to warm-but-not-hot
conditions, as well as to fairly moist environments (probably those where
annual rainfall exceeds 750 mm). In nature it tends to occur in mixed
woodlands and open savannas. It also seems to favor sandy sites; indeed, in
the wild, it is commonly found on deep sands. However, it also readily
colonizes rocky outcrops.
In addition to its own promise, the species may also benefit its better-
known American relatives in at least two ways. For one, smaller seeds could

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perhaps be induced in the popular cherimoya or soursop through creating
hybrids from them using the African custard apple as a pollinator (it
produces pollen prodigiously). The African custard apple may also make an
excellent rootstock for its relatives. The fact that it likes deep sandy soils
suggests that its roots plunge deep and downward, a feature of special
significance in conferring drought resistance.
The plant has seldom been tested outside Africa, but there is a reference
to it growing in Brazil. According to this report, it has become well
established especially around Minas Gerais, Bahia, and Espirito Santo.3
Beyond its fruits, African custard apple could have other important local
uses. Various parts of the tree are renowned for providing medicines. In
Swaziland, for instance, the bark is used to treat open sores.4 And there may
be merit in using the leaves against lice and other skin pests because other
members of this genus are known for their lethal effects on insects.
JUNGLESOP
The junglesop (Anonidium mannii (Oliv.) Engl. & Diels)5 is a medium
sized tropical African tree bearing the fruits that are almost as long as a
person’s forearm and as thick as a leg. Typically these giants weigh between
4 and 6 kg; they are often as big as jackfruit (the world’s biggest fruit).
Despite being more than half a meter long, most of those seen today are not
fully rounded out because of inadequate pollination.
Although a rarity, the plant is very popular where it occurs. In the Central
African Republic, for instance, people reportedly pay up to two days salary
for a single junglesop. And special trips are organized to collect the fruits
during the season.
This fruit’s tough and leathery brown skin has a surface patterned with
raised diamond-shapes. About four or five days after picking, the fruit
softens and can be easily broken open to expose the soft, yellow-orange
flesh inside. In some varieties this is deliciously sweet and very good to the
taste; in others, it can be not only sour but downright awful. Just how mature
the fruit was when picked can affect the sweetness, but genetics also plays a
part, and locals know individual trees that are always sweet and others that
are always sour.
As in most annonaceous fruits, the flavor is rich—but in this case it is
sometimes so rich that a person cannot eat more than a few bites at a time.
But apparently not everyone is so inhibited: People in northern Congo, for
3
Cruz, G. L. 1979. Dicionario das Plantas Uteis do Brasil. Editora Civilizacao Brasileira
S.A., Rio de Janeiro. The plant is locally known as araticum da areia. The fruit is
described with a rougher surface and much bigger than in Africa; it may be an elite
germline but could also be a hybrid or even a variation of some other Annona species.
4
Information from Harry van den Burg.
5
Previously known as Annona mannii. Information in this section came especially from
Roy Danforth and Paul Noren.

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Bangui, Central African Republic. In this area, custard apple trees are a common
accompaniment to rural houses. They are beloved for the deep shade they provide
as well as for the quality fruits that are tasty and salable in the market. (Roy
Danforth and Paul Noren)
instance, say that five hungry men can completely fill their stomachs with a
good-sized junglesop!
Although (or perhaps because) this is a common tree in some of the
Central African rainforest, people have so far failed to develop it as a crop.
Attempt after attempt has come to nothing. Part of the difficulty lies in
fungal diseases that attack the plants. Today, these problems can probably be

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overcome by careful selection of growing site and perhaps other techniques
such as grafting onto resistant rootstocks or the judicious use of fungicides.
Although essentially unknown outside Central Africa, individual trees
now can be found in southern Florida, Hawaii, Malaysia, and northern
Queensland (Australia). All are young, but each is growing well. This
indicates possibilities for a better international understanding of the species,
its management, and its fruit.
GROUND SOP
This plant (Annona stenophylla Engl. & Diels) is a dwarf of the family.
Indeed, it is so small it bears its fruits literally “on the ground.” Nonetheless,
those low-borne fruits rank high in people’s esteem. They are said to be
better eating than even the African custard apple. A southern Africa native,
it is found in northern Botswana, northern Namibia, Zimbabwe, and
Mozambique. Despite the plant’s diminutive size, the fruits are large. They
are yellow or reddish orbs crammed with pumpkin-colored flesh. They are
said to be tasty, and people eat them raw, cooked, or preserved. In the diets
of those living in the semi-arid northern areas of Botswana and Namibia,
ground sop becomes almost a staple during the season.
OTHER SPECIES
Other African Annonaceae yield edible fruit delights as well. Nothing
much can be said about them because as of now they are among the most
obscure resources in the world. Essentially nothing has been contributed to
the scientific literature describing their qualities and promise. Despite that
neglect, however, these seem to have qualities that make them worth
exploration and perhaps exploitation. They include the following species.
Baboon’s Breakfast This plant (Hexalobus monopetalus (A.Rich.) Engl.
& Diels)6 is a shrub or small deciduous tree (2-8 m tall) found throughout
tropical Africa—as far north as Senegal and Sudan and as far south as
Gauteng in South Africa. Its small, oblong fruits are scarlet when ripe and
sometimes are patterned with green-veins. Inside is a juicy white pulp that is
eaten fresh or in the form of jam (said to be delicious). Fresh, they have a
pleasantly acid taste. The seeds are sometimes separated, dried, and
employed as a spicy condiment. The cluster of oval scarlet to orange
fruitlets, each about 5 cm long, are borne in a single flower. According to
one report they taste like the red, sweet ‘Satsuma’ plum, and are much
sought by local people, not to mention myriad animals. In nature, the plant
grows in open woodlands in dry regions as well as reasonably well-watered
ones. It therefore seems quite adaptable.
6
It is known as shakama plum (from the Shangaan name in South Africa) and, in Zambia,
as mkandachembele (N); Bambara names include sama-bolokoni (elephant’s little toe).

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Junglesop produces probably one of the world’s biggest fruits—as long as a
person’s forearm and as thick as a person’s thigh. Like America’s custard
apples, especially cherimoya, this one is sweet and soft. Clearly, this and the
other African custard apples should now join this culinary wave that is lifting
other custard apples in horticultural importance in several parts of the world.
(Roy Danforth and Paul Noren)
Elsewhere in tropical Africa are found the botanically related Hexalobus
senegalensis A. DC (a savanna species) and Hexalobus crispifloris A. DC (a
forest species). Both also offer good fruits, and people like having the trees
around. The latter species is abundant in Cameroon cocoa plantations,
“undoubtedly the result of effective conservation, enrichment planting or
other type of human intervention,” notes an FAO report.7
7
van Dijk, J.F.W. 1999. An assessment of non-wood forest product resources for the

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Dwaba-Berry The dwaba-berry (Monanthotaxis caffra [Sond.] Verdc.) is
a climber, shrub, or small tree (up to 3 m) that occurs in evergreen forests
and nondescript scrub in eastern South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, and
Mozambique. Its small, flask-shaped fruits come in clusters. Yellow at first,
they ripen to a very bright red. Most are eaten fresh and have a slightly
acidulous flavor. Among the wild fruits of northern KwaZulu (South
Africa), these are a favorite of the summer. In Swaziland, fibers stripped
from the bark are made into baskets or even woven into a cloth (traditionally
used for burial shrouds).
Monkey Fingers The so-called Monkey fingers (Friesodielsia obovata
[Benth.] Verdc.)8 is the fascinating fruit that “hangs like a bunch of
sausages” from a single flower of a small tree. The individual fruitlet fingers
are bright scarlet, fleshy, and tart. They are eaten fresh or stewed or cooked
as a tasty jelly. Some are fermented into wine. A fruit of such strange shape
and such bright color seems likely to create great interest in the modern
upscale marketplace, whatever it tastes like.
development of sustainable commercial extraction. In T.C.H. Sunderland, L.E. Clark, and
P. Vantomme, eds., Current Research Issues and Prospects for Conservation and
Development. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome.
8
A synonym is Popowia obovata (Benth.) Engl. & Diels.